i know that i've been gone for a long time. honestly, i wasn't really expecting to post with any kind of regularity. but i have to be honest, since thursday night, i've been doing a lot of thinking.
i'm not going to be maudlin here, or grandstand about how amazing and awesome michael jackson was. or how important he was to me. (although he was both)
in the end, he was a complete stranger. both to me, and i imagine, the rest of the world, even those who thought they were close to him. so now people who can't even spell his NAME properly, and who a week ago dismissed him as some weird pedophile are now crying all over the internet. whatever.

here's what i know:

thriller was the first album-as in, actual record-i ever owned, and i grew up listening to the wiz soundtrack. bad was one of the first tapes i owned, and dangerous one of the first cds. then i just kind of...got into other things. but always had a soft spot for mj, and a 2 or 3 seconds long intro of pretty much any track of his would get me on the dance floor.

i wore out the first and second copies of bad, and lost dangerous, but you'd best be sure i checked on the wiz and thriller this weekend.

i remember everyone being in church one sunday, and as we bowed our heads in silent prayer, my younger brother belting out the beat it chorus, my mom putting him under one arm and walking him out of the back doors while the rest of the congregation snickered.

i remember being in dance class with stephanie nichol and trying to moonwalk in our tapshoes, which worked awesomely because they just slid across the floor.

i remember hurrying home from trick or treating to watch the thriller video on tv with nanny, and then years later, hurrying out of the washroom onto the dancefloor at a halifax bar (pacifico?) when the same video played on halloween some nearly 20 years later.

i remember earlier this year when i was trying to teach the kids at work about pop music history and watching them connect the dots from jackson 5 era michael, to thriller & bad, to the "creeper" they knew him as, and start to re-evaluate what they thought of him and wanted to know more about him

so yeah...
a lot of people are taking this time to sort of (further) demonize or idolize the guy. i don't really think that, for awhile now, i considered the michael jackson that dangled babies and went into hiding and showed up to court in his pjs to be the same michael that posed with the baby tiger or danced through the subway station.
similarly, i don't think of the latter jackson as being same as the adorable little boy in the purple hat, fronting a band of brothers.

no matter which michael you grew up with, you can't deny the man made some of the best music in the world.

i don't even really know what my point is, other than he lived at least 3, and likely many more lives within his lifetime, so it's a weird kind of sadness that i'm feeling with his very sudden (although not wholly unexpected passing), since it's almost like the michael i "knew" has been gone for quite some time now.

but this is an mp3 blog, and you're not here to listen to me ramble on, like the billion other people talking about him since last thursday. it's just kind of shitty that last wednesday no one really seemed to care any more (and i am as guilty as everyone else, i admit).

anyway...
i'm not going to post the stuff that's blazing around the interwebs. i'm quite sure that for now, we've exhausted the remixes and covers (although for sure someone somewhere will be capitalizing on future remixes for the next while). here's the wiz. it's pretty awesome, and was the soundtrack to many an afternoon when i was younger.

you can't win - michael jackson (from the wiz)

ease on down the road - michael jackson and diana ross (from the wiz)
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